LGBT advocate A.S. King to meet children age 8-18 at Hershey Public Library

Hershey, Pennsylvania — On Saturday March 29 at 2:00 pm The Friends of the Hershey Public Library welcome author A.S. King to the Hershey Public Library. Award-winning, nationally recognized local author and LGBT advocate A.S. King will speak, answer questions, and sign copies of her books for children age 8-18. 

A.S. King has traveled the country speaking to high school and university students, educators, and humans who care about the mental health of young people. She has recently launched a non-profit, Gracie’s House, which provides and maintains safe spaces for LGBT youth in rural areas. She also writes bestselling middle school aged fiction as Amy Sarig King.

She has published many other highly-acclaimed novels including 2021’s SW/TCH, 2020 Michael L. Printz Award winner and LA Times Book Prize finalist DIG, and 2015’s surrealist I Crawl Through It.

A.S. King was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1970. She now resides in Lititz. The novelist opened up to Vanity Fair about her 16 year-old daughter’s suicide in 2018.

“She was in stage crew, behind the scenes. She went to stage crew practice on a Saturday morning and never came home.”

“In her last week with us, she came up with an idea for an initiative that she could work on here in our school district. She was super excited about it. She wanted to go to kindergarten-through-grade-two kids to talk about feelings and what to do with them. She wrote her plan on a sticky note. This is what she wrote:”

1. Kill Gender Roles
2. Boys and Girls Can Cry
3. Know What Emotions Are and Name Them
4. Expression Is Healthy
5. Breathe

“The sticky note was still on the kitchen counter the day she died,” her mother said. “I still have it.”